If Blood Bowl was mine.

There has been the usual rumours about the release of a new Blood Bowl box this year with a few minor differences. The removal of specialist games support and the discontinuation of block dice with the NAF. To an optimist (which I am) this could be markers for them to relaunch the site and taking their IP back to make their own block dice.

If Blood Bowl was mine, but I still had the constraints of GW vision of focusing on the core games and producing miniatures for large armies I would do the following...

Release a core game of orcs versus humans and if it sold well produce a second themed set. Maybe a nature theme with wood elves versus amazon's or lizards or a chaos or undead themed game. Within this core box set, I would include two versions of the game. The current competition rules and Blood Bowl 7's with a card overlay to cover each side of the pitch to make the smaller pitch. Each side overlay would be team themed.

The next tactic would be to change the game to operate as a support role for sales to their core games. I'd Look at current lines of the core armies and synchronise the 24 Blood Bowl teams to them. Producing articles on how to convert core lines to Blood Bowl teams. There are already examples of the standard armies successfully converted. Check out bensworkbench.blogspot.co.uk for the following skaven conversion or my own dark elf and orc conversions. For future releases of core units for 40k and fantasy I would keep this in mind and design core units with more options to be weapon-less or assembled in different dynamic poses to meet the needs of multiple hobbies.

Another possibility to modify teams could be to produce small plastic expansion packs of shoulder pads heads with helmets and hands. This could be taken a step further to have rookie, veteran and star expansion packs. The rookie teams could be simple pads and helmets with the vet and star packs becoming my more elaborate. Maybe even packs for player progression to make models to look like they have a specific skill. All the above still encourages purchases of their core models.

To further make the game more collectable, I would follow the path of the electronic codex's, producing them over time for each team.

Team themed codecs would include:

• Team stat's and stars.
• Fluff/backgrounds for the team.
• Play-books for league and tournament team tactics and development.
• Printable themed dugouts, turn and re-roll markers. Maybe 7,s pitch overlays.

Primarily distribution would be electronic to cut down on costs, but also have a premium print on demand service to get gloss versions with card dugout and markers.

Lastly I would let their customers play Blood Bowl in the GW stores.